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Helena Markou

Subject Coordinator, MA Publishing Studies

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Personal Profile

Helena is the Subject Coordinator for the distance learning MA Publishing Studies (VA68) at Oxford Brookes University, where she previously lectured in Publishing, and Digital Publishing. She has also lectured in Digital Book History at School of Advanced Studies, University of London.

Research

Helena's professional career spans publishing, bookselling, and digital consultancy. As Publishing Innovation Manager at Blackwell, she developed and launched the UK's first custom textbook service to incorporate chapters from multiple copyright holders. Prior to this she worked in International Sales at Taylor & Francis and was Head of New Business at Perini Networks.

Helena is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Stirling on longselling books in the UK.

Working Title: The Shelf-Life of Books: An Exploration of the Lifecycle and Longevity of Books in the UK in the 21st Century

Topic: With 180,000 new titles now published each year, there is fierce competition for space on bookshop shelves. This research aims to identify and investigate longselling titles within UK trade publishing (namely the books you find in high street bookshops). It will first establish an overview of the typical lifecycle of books across genres, using quantitative data analysis. Then seek to identify and explore the cultural significance of those titles that, against all odds, remain on bookshop shelves.

Through this research data analysis methods will be developed and the themes of longevity, obsolesce and the impact of online bookselling on the UK publishing industry explored.